


Orphans of the Blight

by sharlatanka



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: F/M, Like the Rugrats but during the blight, two silly kids falling in love
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-01-14
Updated: 2018-08-25
Packaged: 2019-03-04 23:38:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,050
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13375488
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sharlatanka/pseuds/sharlatanka
Summary: Galya Amell and Alistair Theirin are cast into the role of saviors after the carnage at Ostagar, when neither want to fit that role.  They learn on the first night after the battle that they have more in common than they think.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is intended as a one-shot but I am still thinking of turning it into a series, as my Tevinter Inquisitor fic will be. In any case, enjoy Galya and Alistair, two little babies who somehow are supposed to save Thedas.

The rickety, water damaged wooden carriage rattled and threatened to fall apart with every wheel dip into the mud along the worn path from Flemeth’s hut to anywhere else.

Every time it did, Galya Amell jumped and shuddered in her seat next to the only other surviving Grey Warden. They were pressed close in that one-person carriage, pulled by Morrigan ahead of them on a small, tired work horse.

There was no warmth between them, however. Both of their minds were still at Ostagar. The hedgewitches had generously mended and washed their armor and clothing free of blood, dirt, and rank darkspawn viscera, but Alistair found himself wishing they hadn’t. It made the events of the previous night like a nightmare, from which they awoke and found nothing changed. But it all had. King Cailan was dead, and so were all of the Grey Wardens. And Duncan. Duncan was gone, too. Alistair wiped away tears that had begun to creep down his cheek, wishing he was still unwashed so that he could pretend to be wiping away dirt instead.

He turned to his left and caught her looking, with her large, light gray-green eyes that hadn’t stopped pouring tears since the news of the outcome of the battle. She rushed to look away, hiding her face behind a long rope of thick ginger hair braided loosely on both sides of her head.

What did she think? She had just arrived from the Circle of Magi, just become a Warden. He found himself begging, pleading in his mind: Don’t leave, don’t leave. Don’t leave (me here alone). He was the furthest thing from a leader. Judging based on her personality in the brief moments he’d known her, so was she.

It was impossible, in the deafening silence only punctuated by the sound of a solitary owl or the howl of the wind through the trees, for the two young Wardens to know that they were agonizing over the same thing.

So Alistair continued to sniff away his tears, and Galya continued to rub the cracked glass on her formerly pristine Circle mage’s staff— received recently after her Harrowing. Both isolated islands of loneliness and despair, despite their legs pressed against each other.

Morrigan stopped the carriage at a clearing and jumped off of the horse. She began to rifle through the bundles of supplies at the back of the carriage.

“I suppose I should give you more time… seeing as how the rest of the Grey Wardens are on their way to becoming petrified corpses on blight-poisoned ground, but—“ she unceremoniously tossed Galya and Alistair two coiled up bed rolls; both were caught, fumbly. “You two are not, _yet_. So you should stop acting as if you are.” She stretched her legs over one of the wheels. “We’ve been traveling all day— did you even notice? No matter. Get some sleep. By tomorrow we should reach Lothering.”

Alistair muttered a ‘thank you’ insincerely under his breath and dropped out of the carriage. Morrigan was busy setting up her much better outdoor accommodations presumably at her preferred distance from the both of them.

Galya had never slept on the ground, or outside. Alistair made quick work of unrolling his bed for the night and balancing wood that Morrigan had brought along for a fire. She wondered numbly if Jowan had been similarly unsettled by the prospect of sleeping outdoors when he had escaped. She gave a limp twist of her wrist, and a spark grew into a fire from the ether, devouring the kindling under the larger logs.

The two Grey Wardens laid close to one another, far enough away to be alone in their grief but just close enough, in case there was another catastrophe. It could claim neither, or both, but not just one, leaving the other alone.

Galya spoke up quietly, turning her gaze over to Alistair who was covering his view of the stars with his forearms. She felt a bit ashamed that she spoke with a heavy lisp, as of her words wouldn’t be sincere enough.

“I’m sorry about what happened to Duncan. I can see what he meant to you. He was… good to me, too.”

“...Thank you,” Alistair breathed tiredly.

“He… stood very tall, you know?”

“Yeah…”

“His armor made him look so brave. And he had that earring… and—“

For the first time in what seemed like forever, Alistair chuckled, yet weakly. “You don’t need to… _describe him_ to me.”

“Sorry… I don’t think it takes that long to forget how someone looked. I didn’t want to lose any part of that memory.”

“I guess that makes sense.” He said, but was quick to change the subject, all the same. “Is it weird? To be outside… to be outside the Circle?”

She folded her hands over her chest. “Yes. Especially since I had my own Duncan, back at the Circle. Kind of.”

Alistair looked over. “Did you?”

“Well, he was older. First Enchanter Irving. I didn’t feel so bad about not remembering, or knowing my parents, because the First Enchanter was there. He remembered more about my family than I did.” She shrugged meekly and tried for a smile. “I don’t want to… butt in, but you shouldn’t feel ashamed about not knowing your parents. The Chantry, the Circle, there’s no difference.”

“That’s a nice thought, but I could leave the Chantry.”

“You think I would have left the circle?”

“Wouldn’t anyone? Aren’t you prisoners?”

She frowned. “Maybe some think that way. Maybe some had more to lose by being in the Circle. The tower is all I’ve ever known. It’s safe, and it’s warm, and I’ve never gone hungry. And it’s full of people that cared about me.” Galya felt a painful tug in her chest thinking about Jowan again. _Why did he want to leave? Leave all of that, just for a girl? She had no choice but to tell Irving about what Jowan was doing. Jowan was her friend. Jowan shouldn’t have wanted to leave._

Alistair heard her swallow hard and saw her silhouetted hand reach up and brush at her cheeks. “I’m sorry. It was stupid of me to ask. You don’t have to talk about it.”

“No, it’s fine.” She assured him with a sniff. “I just don’t want to bore you with my life. I’ve never done anything as exciting as… this. I just wanted to tell you that we have some things in common. You don’t have to feel alone without Duncan, and… everybody else.”

“Tell me.” He replied simply with a small laugh. “With all that’s happened… I could use a boring story.”

“From the beginning?”

“I don’t really feel like I could sleep tonight. Might as well.”

“As far as I know, my parents were lesser nobles who made their fortune as merchants— luxury goods. It’s sort of difficult to sell porcelain vases when they keep exploding whenever your daughter gets excited or upset. So they left me at the Circle when I was around four years old.”

“They didn’t… try to hide you? Keep you at home?”

“They didn’t want trouble. Irving told me that if my magic was manifesting that early, I could kill someone without training.”

It made Alistair remember when she had exploded the bodies of darkspawn at the tower like a bomb to injure a crowd of them. Galya seemed to notice.

“I want you to know that I never killed before this. Not a thing. Do darkspawn… feel pain?”

“I don’t know, I… never thought about it.” He smiles a little bit in the dark; her tender ignorance in the face of danger was endearing. “Didn’t your parents feel bad about leaving you at the Circle?”

“Irving won’t tell me. For my own good, he says. Which probably means they didn’t care. They had other children— other daughters— and trouble with the Templars could ruin their business and our family name. Maybe the Circle is too far to visit, maybe it isn’t. But it doesn’t bother me. Or it didn’t, before I left the Circle. Now I don’t know what to think about… anything.”

“Well we make quite a pair.” Alistair commented. “I don’t think, either!”

Before he could pause for laughter, or another joke, her hand crept into his and squeezed it tightly. She had cold fingers and a warm palm. The warmth travelled all the way to his reddening face.

“I hope you don’t mind that I… held your hand. Keep holding it, I… I mean,” she whispered, as if she was excusing her words under the normal conversation they should have been having. “At the Circle, we have this tradition. The senior apprentices hold the hands of the new entries the first night, so they won’t feel alone, so they won’t feel like it was a place they had been abandoned to. Mostly,” she admitted, “we did it for the little kids who would cry at night, but… I feel… very alone and am still convinced this must be some nightmare and I wanted to make sure to myself that… someone else was here, too. With me.”

“I… feel the same. Thank you. It’s hard to remember the last time someone held my hand. Why do we stop that kind of thing when we’re adults?”

“I don’t know,” she shrugged. “Maybe we’re still kids. Orphans.”

“Maybe we’re just two kids experiencing the same nightmare.”

She giggled, and he felt inordinately proud of his joke. “If either of us sleep, we can let the other know.”

“Pinch me, just in case.”

“Where—“

“Ow!”

“Sorry—“

“That was my face, Alistair—!”

“Well, you know you’re not dream— ow!”

“And you’re not dreaming, either!”

“Oh,  _shut up and go to sleep!”_ __Morrigan shouted over them before returning to her own tent, muttering about how they were all going to die.

 


	2. Yes-Woman

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Alistair mistakes unassertiveness for heroism but it seems he could grow to like a teacher’s pet as much as he could a hero.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Galya has a heavy lisp, but since I don’t want to muddle the prose too much with it I only include it written out in places where I want to emphasize how she sounds.

“She’s just…. a good person, isn’t she?” Alistair sighed, a little too close to dreamily for Morrigan’s comfort.

“What do you mean?” Morrigan asked as she stepped carefully over rubble on the road. “Have you forgotten what a ‘person’ is? Are you that stupid?”

“No,” clarified, regretting that Morrigan was the only person with whom he could air his thoughts on the particular subject, “I mean she— _Galya_ — has been helping people wherever we’ve landed. She took in a murderer, a crazy Chantry sister, the assassin who tried to kill her, _you_ — and each time told her it was a bad idea. And she still did. She helped that elven family, and that orphan boy in Lothering. She gave half her coin to the refugees. She didn’t ask for any of this to happen, and yet she’s more concerned about others than herself.”

Morrigan rolled her eyes. “What choice do we have in who wishes to fight with us? After all, I have to suffer you.”

“What about the other stuff?”

“That boy’s mother was already dead.”

“And the revered mother?”

“You saw her confusion when the merchant asked that she should probably pay him for the goods she took. She grew up locked in a tower. She doesn’t know what money means, or how it works. I bet she doesn’t even know how much she gave away to the Chantry. She sold my horse to someone, as well. _My horse_.”

Morrigan made a disgusted face when it was clear to her that Alistair wasn’t listening. His eyes were on the other warden, looking truly dreamily then. Galya had buried her nose in a book she had taken from the Lothering Chantry. While she wasn’t looking at the ancient road, she tripped over a slice of cracked stone and fell to one side and then the other,  
Bouncing off of Sven’s massive frame and onto Leliana. She picked up her book after apologizing profusely and emphatically refused Zevran’s help in standing up again.

Alistair’s awe wasn’t lessened one bit. “She’s…. amazing, isn’t she?”

“If you want to bed her, you should just ask her. She’s a bit gangly, though.”

The former Templar-in-training balked and reddened all the way to the tips of his ears. “I-I don't! She’s my friend. And a good person, is all!” He sped up a bit to get away from Morrigan, and crumbled under his breath. “Some of us could stand to follow her example…”

He caught up to the rest of the party. Alistair meant to catch Galya’s arm, but Zevran put a finger to his lips, pursed in a trapped laugh and pointed to the exchange passing between the red-headed mage and the Qunari.

“It is ‘Sten.’”

“Right. Ah, Sthen.” He seemed not to understand her lisp was not a purposeful affect.

“No, again. Sten.”

“I did say Sthen.”

“Sten.”

“Sthen.”

“Is disrespect your intention?”

“No—! It’s just my voice.”

He grunted. “Unlikely. My title is simple. Your mind is just soft.”

“No one has a listhp in Par Vollen?”

“No. But next time if you want my attention on the battlefield, say my title correctly.”

Zevran finally burst into a laugh, which took Galya by a slightly hurt surprise. Alistair took the opportunity to reach forward from where he was walking behind them and squeeze her arm. She fell back to his side, and Zevran and Leliana continued to pester Sten in her stead.

She smiled. “Alisthair.”

He felt his cheeks reddening again, and he covered it by pretending he was rubbing the stubble on his face in thought. He failed to see under her sizeable sunburn (caused by venturing outside the circle for the first time) that she blushed at his attention, too.

“Hey, uh— Galya.”

She waited for him to continue. They both blinked at each other. “Yes.” She filled in the silence. “That’s me.” Then she laughed at bit at the joke she thought she’d made.

“Oh—heh… I know we’ll be reaching Redcliffe soon, and I just wanted to… Well, there’s something I have to tell you. When we camp outside the city. Would that be... alright?”

“Well, why not now?”

“I think it’s… difficult to walk and talk at the same time.”

“That’s true. It’s also difficult to read and walk when you’re outdoors, I realized.”

“Are you okay?”

“Yes— or maybe not. I don’t know what my blood is up to, now that I’m a warden. Does it act the same as regular blood?”

“Yes…?”

She brandished a badly skinned elbow and torn stockings to him. “So it’s fine to wait until we camp for this.”

“Oh, ouch…. I’ll… help, when we stop.” He took her elbow in his hands and turned it this way and that, surveying the damage.

“About your thing you wanted to tell me—“

“Yes! Well, it’s just… important. So I wanted to tell you that I was… I wanted to tell you that I was going to tell you. That’s all. Just to prepare you.”

She looked around at their preoccupied companions for a moment conspiratorily before leaning close to him. “I have something to tell you, too. Fixing up my elbow will be good cover. It’s also really… really important.”

He exhaled like his breath had been trapped in him for days. “Oh, well then, forget about my thing.” Any amount of time he could put off telling her that he was the roundabout heir to the Fereldan throne was a blessing. “We should focus on your thing.”

“I can think about two things at once, Alisthair. You seem really nervous about your thing.”

“Well, you can’t read and walk at the same time. You can’t think about both those things at the same time. Let’s just shelve my thing.”

“Very funny. I’ll have you know I was a champion of the walking-and-reading tournament in the Circle. But we didn’t have to walk on the ruins of a road.”

“You got really bored there, did you?”

“No.” She looked confused. “That was my favorite hobby.”

He felt bad. “Sorry.” That unintended insult settled right on top of the sick in his belly over his royal secret. She went back to her book. They walked silently after that, listening off-handedly to Zevran’s jokes, Leliana’s songs, and Sten’s heavy footfalls.

By the next nightfall they had camped a few miles from Redcliffe. Zevran had expertly captured a few living rabbits. Leliana protested making them a meal, even though she ate rabbit in taverns; “it was just a different thing.” Sten had no such reservations, and so after Galya and Leliana covered their eyes for the killing, they had roast rabbit spiced with what they could find in Lothering. They all ate a bit tensely, unsure of each other. Later that night when each had gone to their own tents, Galya nervously beckoned Alistair over to her side of the fire.

He tried to pretend like he hadn’t ever told her that there was something he needed to say. “Do you… need more bandages for your arm?”

“Keep your voice down!” She cried at the same volume. She seized him by the shoulders of his tunic and stared him down with a ghastly frightened expression. “We have to get out of here!”

“....what?”

“We have to go, _now_!” She started gathering his armor loudly in her arms but found she wasn’t able to carry it all without one piece slipping back to the ground every time she stood up.

“Galya what are you talking about?”

Had she had a nightmare? Alistair hadn’t yet mentioned those to her. But he hadn’t seen her fall asleep.

“I….” She was close to tears. “I screwed up, Alistair! I can’t do this, I can’t stay here…! And you shouldn’t either!”

He took her by the shoulders, letting her hold small pieces of his armor like a security blanket. When he’d tried to take them she held on even tighter, like they were insurance for the surety of them both taking off into the night.

“Tell me what you mean…”

“I… we can’t be around these people!! One tried to kill us, one killed a whole family, one is a hedge witch apostate, and one is a crazy heretic!! I’ll… I’ll never get back into the Circle, and maybe they’ll all kill me— separately!— before I ever got the chance!!”

All of those people she had lovingly accepted into their fighting force?

“What…? But I thought you were happy with them… I was the one protesting—“

“Alistair I don’t know how to say ‘no’!! Refusing anything is scary!” She tapped her chin while following the stream of her own fervent thoughts. “I thought that if I said yes that would bide us time to run away when they least expected it, they wouldn’t be able to kill us right away…”

“Galya… Sten was in a cage and wanted to die. That doesn’t make any sense.”

“None of this makes any sense!!”

“Fair enough—“ Alistair wasn’t fond of any in the group, but he didn’t think their lives were in any danger. He felt her trembling through his hands and thought of the only thing he could do to change the course of the conversation and her mindset.

“Galina, I need you to look me in the eyes, hey— look…I’m going to tell you something…” He took a few visible breaths to coach her along. She nodded pitifully and swallowed a huge gulp of air.

“When I told you I didn’t know my father, it wasn’t exactly true. King Maric was my father.”

All of the air escaped her lips in an an alarmed, nervous burp. She clapped her hands immediately over her mouth, red-faced. “ _WHAT_?” She grimaced through her teeth.

“But I don’t want to be the king. And if we don’t make it to Arl Eamon and ask him what to do… who knows what I would have to do.”

She instantly became more grounded, serious. It gave him comfort. “We can’t leave each other,” she declared. That made him feel something a little stronger than comfort. She huffed and then turned to face the darkened tents where their traveling companions slept bravely, like a soldier staring down an enemy horde. “We’ll just have to make it to Redcliffe, at least, then, haven’t we?”

“I reckon that we’ll have to, ye—“

“Alright, recruits!!” She shouted suddenly, making him jump. “ _WE MARCH ON REDCLIFFE_ —“

Alistair couldn’t suppress a laugh and rushed to cover her mouth with his hand. He accidentally pulled her back slightly, and she fell back on his chest. “Galya, stop, we can wait until tomorrow—!”

“SHUT UP,” Morrigan shouted from her own tent, sensing a pattern about how their nights were always going to end.

Galya stepped away from Alistair bashfully. “So-sorry…” But she looked up and smiled. “Have a good night, Alistair. And… thank you.”

“I’m glad you’re staying.” 


	3. Ruin in Redcliffe

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Alistair and Galya contend with reminders of the past when the gang comes to Redcliffe Castle to see the Arl. Emotions run high. Sten is as usual.

“I come back to the place I grew up, and have to enter through the water mill,” Alistair complained, and flinched when he saw a mouse scuttle under moldy hay behind the bars in front of his eyes. “And the  _ dungeon. _ ”

 

“Lady Isolde seemed quite afraid,” Leliana ventured quietly. 

 

“You sound just like her.” He answered curtly, with a disgusted edge. “ _ Orlesian.”  _

 

Sten shoved Alistair in the shoulders from where he was bringing up the rear of the group. “There isn’t enough air for you to keep complaining.”

 

“It’s my rights. I don’t trust her. She’s leading us into a trap. But none of you will hear me.”

 

“We hear you,” Morrigan’s voice vaulted over the other’s with a haughty air. “We just refuse to  _ listen _ to you. If all you have to offer is your childhood prejudice, it is of no substance to whatever this current threat must be. If anything, the only thing your prattling has done has been convincing me that it was certainly better that I was raised free in the woods rather than be locked in a castle and a cage like a dog. Although it explains a lot about you, Alistair.” 

 

He grunted in response. Sten was correct. The walls were quite narrow and close. His shoulders brushed up against both walls, while musty water dripped from the ceiling onto their heads. Between the conversation mice chittered around the floor. One darted under Galya’s feet, causing her to scream. 

 

“ _ WHO’S OUT THERE?”  _

 

A voice ricocheted nervously around the cobbled walls of the dungeon. 

 

“Two Grey Wardens, a servant of the qun, a mage, and some other person,” Sten answered matter-of-factly in an even tone, without raising his voice. Morrigan made a face at him, Leliana shoved him from her spot in the narrow hall. If it at all affected him, he didn’t let it show. 

 

“Oh  _ thank the Maker,”  _ the voice responded. “You’re not demons…  _ Please,  _ you have to get me out of here…! I’m being held prisoner!” An arm stretched out from one of the rusted cell doors about six feet away from where Morrigan was leading the group. 

 

Galya found the voice familiar. Intensely familiar. Without a word she shoved her way past Morrigan with a careless fervor most unlike her normally timid nature.  She took slow steps towards the cell in which the prisoner continued to plead his case. She wasn’t listening. She’d heard much of it before.

 

_ One. _

 

_ Two.  _

 

_ Three. _

 

_ Four. _

 

_ Five. _

 

_ Six. _

 

She reached the bars, gently resting her fingers on the cold iron before launching her fists into the cell and grasping, poking, scratching, and choking the prisoner with all of her strength. 

 

“ _ JOWAN…! I’LL KILL YOU!”  _

 

The prisoner was screaming. 

 

“YOU’RE DEAD, JOWAN, YOU H-HEAR ME, YOU...YOU B-BASTARD?!  YOU’RE DEAD...!!”

 

Jowan, weighing more than Galya, was able to lean away and pull her so unwittingly close to the cell door that her cheek was flush with the iron. Her arms flailed in the cage, invisible to her companions. It was difficult to get a grip on the prisoner in the dark; he had begun to fight back by pulling painfully on one of her long braids. 

 

“This seems… embarrassing.” Sten commented dispassionately. Morrigan and Alistair for once shared a stunned reaction. 

 

Leliana pitched forward to separate her friend and the prisoner. She hugged Galya, trembling, by the shoulders to calm. Galya had begun to cry. 

 

“Open the g-gate, Sten…!” She ordered with a stiff wave of her arm, restricted as it was in Leliana’s embrace. 

 

“Only if you’re calm,” Leliana said. In response, Galya merely stared intensely ahead and wiped mucus and tears from under her nose with her hand. One of her long braids was frayed and coming undone. 

 

“I see no other way out of this tunnel than to address this situation.” Sten said, following his own orders to crack the lock. He impacted it with the butt of a dagger he carried. It fell apart with ease. “From his inability to break open the lock with his own hands, he is a mage.” 

 

“A  _ blood mage _ ,” Galya hissed as if the name itself was an insult. “ _ Maleficar!” _

 

Jowan exited the cell, looking weaker than he ever had looked while languishing in the Circle. “Only because you betrayed me.” 

 

“ _ Me?!”  _ She broke free from Leliana’s grip and bodily tackled Jowan to the moldy cobblestone floor, returning to punching and grappling him.

 

“ _ YOU BLAME ME?!” _

 

“I could have been with Lily now if you hadn’t done what you’d done!” All Jowan could do was throw fistfuls of wet straw at Galya. 

 

“You broke the rules!” 

 

“ _ You barked it to the First Enchanter like  _ a trained  _ dog!”  _

 

Galya rained several more blows down on his head and chest with heaving, emotional breaths. The aggression proved too much for her lungs to take, and with an exhale, she sobbed loudly, hoarsely.

 

“ _ YOU RUINED MY LIFE….! YOU DID THIS TO ME, JOWAN…!”  _

 

He was bruised, and gobsmacked. “I… I don’t know what you mean!!” 

 

She let out a strained scream and confined to hit him until Sten effortlessly lifted her and held her tightly under one of his arms. “This is unbecoming, Warden.”

 

* * *

 

Jowan’s later explanation elucidated the issues which brought the undead flowing in a steady stream from the castle.  The atmosphere among the group continued to be tense throughout the fighting, and into the late evening after Lady Isolde revealed the truth about Connor.

 

It was safe enough to spend the night away from the boy as his mother and Lord Teagan kept him occupied. Still, the heinous laughter of a demon punctuated by the helpless cries of a child when Connor was able to break through the possession in brief moments did nothing to lift the mood.

 

They say around the dining table eating whatever gruel was shelf-stable and stretched thin while the castle was unreachable.  Sten ate without protest. Morrigan heavily protested, but ate anyway. Leliana ate quietly, not wanting to be rude about the taste. Both Galya and Alistair ate nothing at all. She stared blankly at her full bowl. He alternated between watching her worriedly and watching the gray gruel drip from his spoon back into the bowl. 

 

“...Is the castle like you remember it, Alistair?” Leliana finally broke the silence. 

 

He grunted. “Oh, yes.” A wet dollop of gray matter hit the edge of his bowl and dripped down the side. “Same food for me, too. ‘Save the mud, Harriet, dear, Alistair is coming.’” 

 

Morrigan snorted. 

 

Then all were silent again. 

 

Leliana wouldn’t give up on the conversation. “A shame about that poor boy. Galya… you think your friends at the Circle can help him?” 

 

“...I don’t have friends at the Circle.  _ Jowan  _ was my friend. He roped me into his schemes. I told the First Enchanter. Still, he forced me to join the Wardens. He ruined my life. They wont welcome me like they used to. Even though I did everything right.” She answered quietly. Feeling a great pang of guilt for thinking of herself over Connor, she added quietly, “...But I hope they can help. If he was sent to the Circle, none of this would have happened.”

 

Morrigan hissed around her gruel. “He would have been a prisoner there. An animal in a cage.” 

 

“A  _ ‘trained dog,’  _ do you think?” Galya muttered under her breath. 

 

“‘Tis not a dog’s fault she sees her cage for a home or her rightful place.” Morrigan offered, gentler this time. “Besides, wouldn’t we all such a mother as Isolde who loves her son enough to keep him safe from Templar abuse?” 

 

Galya wordlessly got up from her chair and left the room. 

 

Alistair watched her go, but Leliana’s assurances that the girl should have some time to herself, as well as Alistair’s own emotional immobility in his childhood home (if it could even be called such) made him sit, watching the slop in the bowl as one by one each of their companions left the table to their respective beds for a no doubt sleepless rest. 

 

Alistair gathered the bowls and washed them, hearing a memory of Lady Isolde’s voice, seemingly much louder when he was young as it was when he saw her again that day, scolding him for expecting a free meal for doing no work. 

 

_ What’s a bastard mistake worth if he can’t even clean up after himself?  _

 

He heard a loud shuffling from one of the other rooms— wood smacking against wood, books hitting the floor. Worried that it was Connor (or whatever Connor had  _ become _ ), he cautiously walked toward the commotion. 

 

It was coming from Eamon’s office. His dusty, untouched office. Alistair had not even been allowed to see the man who had done his best to raise him, who laid dying only a floor above. 

 

“Galya?” 

 

She ripped open a drawer on his desk, snapping Alistair out of his sorrow, for a moment. She slammed the drawer, dislocated from the desk, onto a pile of open books and journals which were stacked haphazardly on its top. Alistair winced. The desk almost represented all he was able to see of Eamon. And she was ripping it apart.

 

She didn’t answer, and only knit her brow more severely.

 

“Hey— don’t  _ do  _ that… what are you doing?” He was too tired to yell. So was she. 

 

“Looking for something.”

 

“For what?” He stepped further in the room to observe the search.

 

“Something.  _ Anything. _ ” She clarified. “Connor is suffering. If there’s something…. Something to draw him away from the demon. Something special for him to remember of his father’s.” 

 

“You should go to sleep.” He suggested with a barely suppressed yawn. “Morrigan and that… Jowan already said that if we could only ask for some mages from the circle—“

 

Her fingers tensed, knuckles white while holding on to the pulled drawer. “Aren’t I a mage? Isn’t Jowan? Isn’t Morrigan? Why can we just do it ourselves?” 

 

“Then one of you, or Lady Isolde, would have to sacrifice—“

 

“Jowan deserves to die.” She spat back, eyes to the floor. 

 

He rested a warm hand on her cold tensed fist. “Don’t you want to go back to the Circle…?” 

 

“No…” she replied, voice thick, lip quivering, chin dimpling. 

 

“What not? It’s all you talk about…” 

 

“Because… because if I went back I would have to leave again.” She cried. A few teardrops stained the deep red wood of the desk before she brought up her sleeve to catch them. “I can’t bear it. I can’t leave it again…”

 

“Galya, I don’t understand…” 

 

“Well… do you feel good about leaving Eamon while he’s so close to death? Do you feel good about leaving your chance to speak to him again?”

 

Alistair swallowed hard. He understood her, but also had the feeling she was hurt, and so wanted to hurt him to feel better. He couldn’t blame her, especially after her outburst earlier in the day towards Jowan. 

 

“If we don’t leave to find some way to save him, I might never get the chance again.” 

 

She blinked away tears. “I’m sorry, Alistair… I wasn’t… I wasn’t thinking.” 

 

He shrugged it off. They shared the silence for a moment. Connor’s screams permeated the stone walls. Then all was quiet again. 

 

Alistair began to search, not knowing what for, just knowing that Galya would perhaps stress less if he helped with the errand. 

 

“Galya… did you really mean it, when you told Jowan… that he ruined your life by sending you to the Wardens? I didn’t know the whole story before today, I… well…” 

 

The words had been throbbing in his head since they were spoken. Becoming a warden was the most freeing experience of his life, and according to Galya, it had doomed hers. 

 

She thought the question absolutely deaf. Galya had a perfectly content life as a newly-minted mage before she was trapped in a scheme she tried to stop, exiled from her home, made to drink tainted blood that irreversibly shortened her life, watched countless die, and now had the fate of the world on her shoulders. 

 

But she knew Alistair. And she cared about him. There, sitting with him in the dark office, she was realizing she cared more than she knew how to process or explain, all things considered. She sniffed. “I…” She didn’t want to lie. “Alistair I… I don’t want to say.” Hesitating to meet his eyes, she finally did, only to catch him looking away. “Is that okay…? I’m sorry, I just—“ 

 

The only other Warden in Ferelden took a deep, shaky breath. “Yeah, sure,” he blurted out unceremoniously, then changed the subject, sounding as though he would never exhale for fear of some rogue emotion escaping. “Found anything so far?” 

 

“Just papers, notes… pens.” She shrugged. “Desk things. Ah…” she peered under a pile of stray pages and pulled out something by its stained silver chain. “And this. I thought it must be some sort of protective amulet for Connor or—“

 

“ _ Mine—“  _ Alistair let go of his pent breath. He swept the amulet up in his palms. “This is it. Galya— remember the story I told you— my mother’s amulet?” 

 

He presented it to her, outlining with a finger the mended fissure where he had thrown it against a wall as a child. “This is it— Eamon fixed it and kept it… all this time?” 

 

“Somewhere he could easily reach it.” Galya offered with a small smile, for the first time that day. “Somewhere he could hold it and remember you. Somewhere he would know where to find it so that he could give it to you. Here—“ she took it and held it up to him. “Wear it.” 

 

He laughed, releasing a small sob. “Won’t look that good on me, I reckon. You have it. It would shatter again if I wore it.” He looped it around her neck.

 

“It’s beautiful.”

 

“I think it’s a fake stone.”

 

“That’s okay.” 

 

He fixed its position on her neck. She felt his cool breath on her cheeks. He smelled like sweat and pine. 

 

“You see, Galya. What we love always finds a way to us again, whether we leave it or not. That’s why I know I’ll talk to Eamon again, and when I do I’ll show him—“ 

 

She kissed him on the cheek suddenly, a bit surprised at herself that she had missed his lips. She tried again. He didn’t resist; instead, he helped her find them, and brought his hands to her cheeks to steady her. 

 

They broke away, both looking sufficiently surprised.

 

“...I was going to say,” he ventured, seeing she was embarrassed into silence. “That this means you can go to the Circle again to get help without feeling like you’re leaving it behind again. It will always be there for you.” 

 

“The Circle…!” She gasped loudly, remembering something he wasn’t privy to. Covering her lips with her fingers, she shoved past him, red-faced. “I… I-I’m sorry!! F- _ forget _ this happened…!! Don’t t-tell  _ anyone _ !!” 

 

“Galya?”

 

“ _ I’m going to sleep!!!!!” _

 

In all the daydreams he’d had about being kissed, he didn’t think it would be in the torn-apart office of his father figure, with a mage wearing his mother’s necklace, while a demon possessed a little boy upstairs, while all the Grey Wardens were dead, and he didn’t think the after of it all involved her behaving as if she had inexplicably seen a ghost which warned her of the connection between the Circle and kissing. There must have been more than one thing she didn’t want to tell him. 

  
  
  



End file.
